What is apartheid and why do some accuse Israel of it? | Start Here

What is apartheid and why do some accuse Israel of it?

In the past, apartheid was associated only with South Africa. Now, it’s a label that some attach to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. So what is apartheid? How did it work in South Africa? And why is it now being used in the context of Israel? Start Here with Sandra Gathmann explains.

The town destroyed to make way for a whites-only suburb

 

On 9 February 1955 apartheid South Africa forcibly evicted residents from Sophiatown, a multi-racial suburb in Johannesburg. 65,000 people were ‘removed’ and Sophiatown was demolished and turned into a whites-only neighbourhood called Triomf.

Elizabeth Nobathane was a child at the time and shares her memories of the night soldiers arrived to move her family to a segregated new township called Meadowlands, 13 miles outside of Johannesburg.

Tributes to anti-apartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu - BBC News

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace prize laureate who helped end apartheid in South Africa, has died aged 90. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said the Archbishop's death marked "another chapter of bereavement in our nation's farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans".

From Sheikh Jarrah to Gaza: Journalism under apartheid

 

Blockade, bombardment and Israeli occupation have not stopped Palestinians from documenting and telling their stories. Now, the world is beginning to listen.

Just days after the ceasefire in Gaza ended 11 days of bombing, The Listening Post spoke with two Palestinians who have tilted international attention towards their struggle.

South African Ambassador To Japan Responds To Apartheid Is Grand Column

Last week former Shinzo Abe adviser Ayako Sono writing in the Sankei shinbun stated that South Africa's discarded system of Apartheid might useful in helping the Japanese government deal with foreigners living in Japan.  Naturally a whole lot of derision was thrown Ayako Sono's way for channeling her inner Klansman.   

Now South Africa's ambassador to Japan has responded to her column with a letter that was published in the Sankei shinbun last Sunday.
    South Africa has protested after a prominent columnist in leading right-wing newspaper in Japan praised racial segregation under apartheid as a model for Japanese immigration policy, the paper said Sunday.Mohau N Pheko, South Africa’s ambassador to Japan, accused novelist Ayako Sono of glorifying the system of apartheid in the column published on Wednesday in the Sankei Shimbun.
Sono, who was previously an adviser to the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on education reform, wrote that Japan needs immigrant workers to help care for its rapidly aging population—but that those workers should “live apart”, as they did in South Africa under apartheid.
Pheko’s letter of protest, according to a story published in the Sankei on Sunday, branded apartheid “a crime against humanity” and said it “must not be justified in the 21st century”.